The present invention relates generally to telecommunication systems, and more particularly, to improved systems and methods of providing interdepending data to exchanges in a wireless communication system.
As wireless communication continues to gain acceptance and popularity, the number of subscribers, especially in metropolitan areas, steadily increases towards system capacity limits. To handle the increased volume, new equipment is often added to increase the capacity of the high traffic areas. At the same time, wireless telecommunications technology is constantly evolving in an effort to increase capacity, and improve the quality and functionality of wireless systems. Network operators continually seek better ways of managing and optimizing the operation of wireless communication systems. Improved system management schemes often require the tracking and dissemination of various parameters and variables which change over time to reflect the conditions of the system. Some of the changes in the conditions of communications systems are due to equipment which has been newly added or reconfigured. Newly added equipment generally entails some initialization of the new portions, and the existing portions, of the communication system. Upon adding new equipment, or redefining coverage areas of existing equipment, the data for various connections and parameters of the new equipment must be initialized and stored. In addition, any data of existing equipment which is affected must also be revised.
The newly added equipment may be a wireless exchange such as a mobile switching center (MSC) having several different cells. For example, in a city covered by two MSCs, a third MSC could be added to handle an increase in the number of mobile users. The third MSC may cover additional surrounding areas outside of the city as the population spreads out. Alternatively, the third MSC may cover portions of the same area previously covered by the two original MSCs if the geographic region stays the same size but the density of users increases.
FIG. 1 is a conventional cellular radio system 100 which provides communication service to a number of cells C1-C5. Each one of the cells C1-C5 has one of the fixed base stations (116-124) within its boundaries. The base stations each include a transmitter, receiver, and base station controller. The radio system 100 includes a number of MSCs, e.g., MSC 126 and MSC 128. Each MSC is connected to and controls one or more of the base stations (116-124). For example, MSC 126 serves base stations 116 and 124, while MSC 128 serves base stations 118, 120, and 122. The MSCs 126 and 128, in turn, are connected to a public switched telephone network (PSTN) (not shown). The MSCs 126 and 128 are also connected to a home location register (HLR) 130.
Configured as such, the radio system 100 provides communication services to mobile users located within the radio coverage area of the system 100, such as the mobile stations 102-114 shown in the figure. The MSCs switch calls to connect various wireline and mobile subscribers. The MSCs also provide control signaling to the mobile stations, and are used for operational administration and maintenance of the system 100. As more MSCs are added to the radio system 100 to handle increases in wireless usage, each new MSC must be initialized with the data and parameters necessary for communications with the surrounding MSCs. This is generally done by manually programming the interdepending information into the new MSC using man machine language (MML). Changes to interdepending information can be effected by a human operator manually entering system parameters using Ericsson""s AXE-10 MML. In such systems the operator enters an MML command which has the parameter values in the appropriate fields. For example, in AXE-10 the xe2x80x9cMTCTCxe2x80x9d command can be used to set the channel number to 315 and the attenuation of the output power to 6 dB in control channel device 10 (i.e., xe2x80x9cMTCTC: DEV=MCC-10, CHNR=315, ATT=6;xe2x80x9d).
Other sorts of data may be entered into an MSC, and then into adjacent MCSs, to assist network operators in adjusting the system characteristics and operational parameters. For example, system operators may rely on counter-based systems on the network side to gather performance data. Such performance data may be used to maintain their systems and allocate resources. Handover statistics are among the performance parameters and events which are often tracked using the event counters, including attempted and successful handovers into or out of a cell. In other instances, the mobile terminal may make measurements and report the results to the system, for entry into one or more wireless exchanges. Such mobile terminal measurements include, for example, signal strength measurements for downlink signals (i.e, from the base station to the user). In either the case of counter-based system statistics or mobile unit measurements, post-processing may be used to convert collected event data into a more user-friendly format such as a report, or graph, which may be read by a human operator, and entered into one or more MSCs. In this way, the human operator can alter the system configuration on the basis of the performance information from the report or graph. Systems for making measurements and forwarding various parameters in wireless communications systems are discussed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/305,087, the entire contents of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
A drawback of conventional systems is that interdepending data must be manually entered twice, once in each adjacent wireless exchange, that is, once in the serving exchange and then again in a target exchange. These and other drawbacks, limitations and problems associated with conventional network management techniques are overcome according to the present invention which is drawn to various method and apparatus embodiments for providing interdepending data to a serving exchange and one or more target exchanges in a communication system. The present invention provides interdepending data to the exchanges without impacting the other data of the communication system, e.g., the payload data or communications data.
In accordance with embodiments of the present invention, interdepending data can be provided to a serving exchange and one or more target exchanges in a wireless communication system by manually entering cell data for the cell of a first exchange, the cell data comprising interdepending data, which triggers an update event. In response, a data update message is defined and then conveyed to one or more target exchanges.